Growing up in Europe : A century of theoretical self-deception
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2022-06
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Abstract
Western anthropologists invented the concept of kinship to describe the “other” which seemed to be integrated by kin ties. While Euro-pean (broadly speaking) kinship principles rested on the assumption that birth-related ties must be re-evaluated and replaced by choice-based ones during the process of growing-up, the societies with strong “kin ties” seemed to be lingering in social childhood. I use Western social theories not as sources of intellectual wisdom, but as ethnographic artifacts produced by the intellectual elites of the so-cieties under scrutiny. Theoretical assumptions like status contract, Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, strong-weak ties, bonding-bridging so-cial capital—all reiterate the same vision of social change where the past, and early social life is associated with ties produced through birth and the future is associated with choice. A similar framework (flesh vs spiritual kinship) was advocated by European Christians since early Medieval times. Many of these theories draw direct par-allels with (European) assumptions of individual development: if birth-related ties are not severed, pathology of sorts results. The fear (or prediction) of the constantly disappearing European family also is a part of the general narrative of growing up in Europe. I argue that we need to start looking at European kinship not via theory that was developed to describe the “rest” but as an integral part of Eu-ropean social fabric and consequently evaluate the stream of global theories (e.g., proposing ends of history) in a world where Europe heads towards the periphery.
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Anthropoloty, theory, kinship, Europe, 5.4 Sociology, 5.9 Other social sciences, 3.4. Other publications in conference proceedings (including local), SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities, SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
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Sedlenieks, K 2022, 'Growing up in Europe : A century of theoretical self-deception', Old Discipline, New Trajectories, Vilnius, Lithuania, 16/06/22 - 18/06/22 pp. 51.
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